Perhaps some of the discussion in this article is still largely wishful thinking on the parts of Dell and Intel to get a bigger footprint in an area where they don't really have that big a play yet. At the same time, if the carriers can use them to squeeze their traditional supplier base then its all good competition (or at least perceived competition).

That's a really good point and something that neither Dell nor Intel really tackled in their talks. I'm curious if they expect a third party to operate security or if they'll build it in at the ground level somehow.

So when all the communications traffic goes thru common hardware running common software any security vulnerability is going to be much wider. I'd like to hear how all these new lines of code created by 'regular' programmers are going to be hacker free...